More than 10 million Australians were cut off from the Internet and phone services yesterday after unexplained outages struck one of the country’s largest communications companies.
The mystery glitch crashed electronic payment systems, disrupted phone lines used by ambulances and police, and briefly halted rush-hour trains in the country’s largest city, Melbourne.
Optus, a subsidiary of Singaporean telecommunications company Singtel, said some services had been restored yesterday afternoon, but it was unable to pinpoint what had caused the fault.
Photo:AFP
“Our team is still pursuing every possible avenue. We had a number of hypotheses and each one so far that we’ve tested and put in place new actions for has not resolved the fundamental issue,” Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin told ABC. “When we have identified a root cause and a time for restoration, we’ll be updating everybody as soon as we can.”
She said there was “no indication” the outage was the result of hacking.
Just over a year ago, more than 9 million Optus customers had their personal data stolen in a cyberattack.
The company said in a separate statement that it “may take a few hours for all services to come back on line.”
A host of organizations and business confirmed yesterday evening that issues had been resolved, including the federal department of education, the Royal Melbourne Hospital and Australian Commonwealth Bank.
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